Traveling in luxury

Posted by
Inside Hoops

Nov
30

As the editor of InsideHoops.com, I make more money in a month than Shaquille O’Neal makes in a year. I write this while flying on my private jet to visit one of my 29 mansions. Still, even compared to me, NBA players live a life of luxury. It’s also possible I’m hallucinating. Anyway, the Toronto Star (Dave Feschuk) reports:

In L.A. last night, for instance, the Raptors stayed at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, an ultra-luxe crash pad to pop-culture deities from John Lennon to Julia Roberts. The place is opulent enough that Jim Labumbard, Toronto’s veteran media relations guru who’s forgotten more nights in five-star hotels than most of the rest of us will ever experience, recalls bunking in a Wilshire suite lavish enough to have a bathroom on either end of its acreage. “Two bathrooms?” said Chris Bosh, the Raptors all-star, shrugging as though he’d know exactly what to do with such extravagance. “Have two baths, man.” If NBA players have grown blasé about their luxury lifestyle, consider that it’s been more than 20 years since the Detroit Pistons led the move to now-universal private-charter air travel. And even Sam Mitchell, the 43-year-old former player, can scarcely recall the days when a veteran had to pay a premium to secure his own room on the road. In this every-man’s-an-island league, a spacious room of one’s own is now an inalienable right written into the collective bargaining agreement.